Posted by Selina on January 28, 19103 at 19:58:14:

In Reply to: The Wax Argument posted by Stu on February 04, 1999 at 18:23:57:

ill just tell you what ive writen in my own essay about it, hope it helps.
~After having ‘proved’ the meaning of ‘I’, he tries to find out if the nature of the mind is better known of than that of the body. He asks the reader to imagine a piece of wax, recently removed from a hive and has not yet lost its honey-flavour, it smells of flowers, it is hard and cold. Once the wax has been heated however it alters in every way. The wax looses its flavour, scent, colour and form. It also changes temperature. Descartes wonders how we perceive it to be the same substance throughout such a transformation.
“Perhaps the wax was what I now think it is: namely that the wax itself never really was the sweetness of the honey, nor the fragrance of flowers, nor the whiteness, nor the shape, nor the sound, but instead was a body that a short time ago manifested itself to me in these ways, and now does so in other ways. But just what precisely is this thing that I thus imagine? Let us focus our attention on this and see what remains after we have removed everything that does not belong to the wax: only that it is extended, flexible and mutable.”
So Descartes concludes there must be a ‘nature’ to wax as it can shift shape and size. Sensory perception of the wax (as it is changeable) does not permit us to grasp its nature. Descartes believes that imagination and sense perception can not give insight into the nature of wax. His reason for rejecting the imagination is because as the wax is flexible and changeable it is capable of many shapes which the imagination would allow you to grasp by representing these changes with an image of each possible shape. As his imagination can not do this, he decides that it can not be able to grasp this characteristic of the wax. Thus, the wax must be perceived by something other than the imagination and sense perception, which Descartes believes is the mind itself.
On further investigation the mind arranges the data, coming to a clear and distinct understanding. Descartes believes that, “this process depends on how closely I pay attention to the things”. He poses the example of looking out the window and observing men walking across the street. His mind tells him they are men without him having to see their masculine physical features. This is done automatically and without thinking. Therefore, his eyes see human forms walking across the street, but his mind investigates and arranges the data to perceive it as men. “Thus what I thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgement, which is in my mind”. ~

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